Written by someone who was both a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and one of the originators of Reaganomics, I couldn’t resist the act of subverting the Free Market system by using the collective taxes of city, state and federal payees (of which I was one) to finance my ability to read this tome. So I took the book off the shelf, walked to the check-out line and whipped out my trusty Queens Library card. Ah, yes, one of the beautiful yet underappreciated aspects of socialism — the Public Library system.
In this book Bartlett defended the policies of supply-side economics during the 1980’s but argued that those policies are not a panacea for all times and economic conditions. He criticized, in particular, the way Republicans grossly exaggerated the benefits of tax cuts when they claimed, among other things, that reducing taxes actually increased revenue. He stated that no one involved in the making of Reaganomics made that claim. He went even further to make it clear that no one even claimed that the taxes would pay for themselves. Only some of the loss in revenue would be recouped by increased economic activity, according to Bartlett.
I don’t recall if he gave a precise number as to the percent of the loss that would be regained but from the reports that I’ve paid attention to, the most trustworthy seem to be around 30%. But even that number seems to be too generous, in my opinion, especially when you consider the spectacular failures in tax cutting experiments that occurred during George W Bush’s eight years or after Kansas Gov. Brownback’s cuts — one of the largest in Kansas’ history — which was based on model legislation published by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
I’ve gained a lot of respect for Bartlett as one of those not too rare Republicans/conservatives who do not resort to bullshit and will call it when his fellow R/c’s do. David Stockman, one of the other Reaganomics creators, has also echoed Bartlett’s charges of right-wing bullshit.
Speaking of right-wing bullshit, nothing can surpass radio blowhards such as Rush Limbag and Sean Hannity who made ridiculous claims by constantly telling their audiences that “the more you cut taxes, the more revenue you get” (Limbag) and “every time you cut taxes, you double revenue” (Hannity). Let me stress that I am not using hyperbole — these are the precise words that those dick heads used. I know for sure because I heard them say it a million times. OK, that’s hyperbole.
During Bush Jr’s administration, when the magic failed to appear after his Super-Duper Star Spangled supply-side tax cuts, even his own economists, such as Greg Mankiw and Alan Greenspan were forced to admit that claims of tax cuts paying for themselves, much less increasing revenue, were just like Limbag, himself — a giant heaping load of horseshit. OK, they didn’t use those exact words, I’m paraphrasing.
As Bartlett explained, conservatives used to value balanced budgets and little debt. They would rather raise taxes than increase the deficit/debt. Then some scoundrels, like Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney and Stephen Moore realized that they couldn’t convince the majority of voters that the government programs that benefited them were actually an infringement on their liberty. So they concocted a pernicious plan that would do what honest politicking couldn’t. They decided to cut taxes every time they were in power while increasing spending on all the things they liked (the military, wars) or would help them politically (Medicare part D). The inevitable huge increase in the deficit/debt would then be used as the excuse to get rid of all the programs they hated.
This plot worked like a charm under the Reagan and Bush Jr administrations. These were the only post WWII administrations where the national debt rose as a percentage of GDP.*
These hard core hard-ons believed that the wealthy — and the wealthy alone — are responsible for the creation of wealth, and the rest of society has nothing to do with it. They say the wealthy are the job creators and the rest of us are only ungrateful beneficiaries of their benevolence. But, of course, jobs are created by society (which is all of us) because society creates the economy, which gives the wealthy the opportunities to acquire wealth. See? Society makes the opportunities and the wealthy takes the profits.
In order for a job to be “created” there must be someone ready, willing and able to perform it. The person who performs the job is just as responsible for creating it as the person who hired him/her.
But business owners don’t really create jobs. They consume labor.
And it is not benevolence that motivates businesses to hire workers. It’s the profit motive. They need workers to do the work so they can make a profit. A more accurate description of the so-called “job creators” would be “job eliminators.” Because jobs are an expense. They cost money. Which cuts into profits. That’s why most businesses would lay you off in a heartbeat if it could save them a dime. That’s why they ship jobs overseas and hire workers in dirt poor countries that don’t provide any protection for their workers. That’s why they are developing automation that can eventually eliminate all manual labor, thus increasing their profits greatly.
The wealthy would not have been in a position to do this if the rest of us didn’t create a stable society by policing our streets, raising and educating our children, providing a workforce, building and maintaining our infrastructure, creating and maintaining a Government and court system that protects the wealthy’s riches, defending our country against foreign enemies, and all of the other countless things that people do for the benefit of the wealthy (including many things that people don’t get paid for). These things are absolutely necessary in providing those opportunities for the wealthy to become rich.
The economy, and those opportunities that it provides, were built — in the largest part — from the blood, sweat and toil of labor.
Now, at a time of unprecedented wealth disparity and a humongous national debt — caused in most part by the policy of “Starve the Beast” economics under the Reagan and Bush Jr administrations, the only administrations when the debt ROSE as a percentage of GDP* — what is the Republiconservalibertarian prescription? Even more concentration of wealth at the top and even more debt by returning to the policies of Starve the Beast economics.
It turns out, it’s the wealthy Republiconservalibertarians who are the ungrateful beneficiaries of society’s benevolence. They will sink to any level, do anything, in order to avoid paying taxes, as Trump’s “greatest tax cuts in history” proves.
Now that phase one of Starve the Beast economics is in place, Trump and the Republicons will institute phase two: massive spending in Republicon favorites like the military.
Phase three, cuts in the programs that benefit everyone else, comes later when they turn their attention to how much the debt has increased.
*It also rose under Obama, but don’t forget, Bush’s supply-side tax cuts were still in effect. When Obama finally raised taxes on the very top in 2013, job creation started to rise significantly — even though the Republiconservalibertarians called it a jobs killer.
